


for I have loved a wild thing

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Growing Up, M/M, Painful Horrible No Good Crushes, Post The Movie Just, Pre-Slash, Shame and Confusion, Stream of Consciousness, Temporarily Unrequited Love, of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 21:04:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: Jim suffers the nights.





	for I have loved a wild thing

**Author's Note:**

> Characterisations and situations based on Muppet Treasure Island. Muppet characters are adapted into human background roles. This is for non-profit fun only.

Jim sleeps in the clammy bedroom he shares with his brothers, tasting the sea through the cracked windows, and dreams of the bowels of ships. Those vessels swaying heavy, the bow closest to the booming ocean beneath, all that wood and rope and sap, heaving away small worlds within its timber skin. How it becomes every man's casket at the sinking of it, and oh, Jim remembers the galleys, the scum green apples, how tough with salt the beef was, spices and herbs and dead chickens hung from the ceilings.

Everything is hazy. Jim is sweaty and troubled and in pain, for over the months his body has rearranged into something _male,_ and boyhood is gone with each breath. He lies there, tossing in his sheets, imagining fire streaking his veins, stretching him out like bread dough, yeast of adulthood making him rise and form and become something else entirely. He feels like he will consume and be consumed, or both, but he feels like the consumed, often, and the more he wonders, the more it comes to life in his mind, the mad mess of noise that makes his thoughts take shape into his dream ship galley.

The galley is smaller in his memory, everything is too close, and the benches have short tables and shorter chairs. Jim can hear the snort and snores of his brothers, and the dream trembles, blurring for a moment, and he is so aghast he bites his lip to stop crying out, but it endures, barely, filling out his eyes until he is certain he is finally, blissfully, dreaming.

The galley is wonderful in its darkness but also sad, strained, as if aware it be a mirage and nothing more, but the smell of the sea is too strong, weeping through the boards like tears. There be the dreaming shape - not a boy shape, but a man shape, with a casual brazen smile, black and red and gold, coming from the shadows as if they be friends of his - stepping forward, and Jim's fright is wonderful and terrible, a crossing of wires that slips hot in his lower belly, and the shape knows it too, for he continues that sinister smile and he slithers toward him, the big gold buckle across his chest pressing painfully into Jim's midriff as he closes him in, and he hears the chuckle, dangerous, and the touch on his face, tender.

The galley shifts. The sea air is too strong. Oars dip and hurl in black oceans, and the reflection of tears are in those hooded, hunting eyes, and Jim grips the shadow by the gilt of his coat and yanks him near.

Jim wakes. He is sore, aching hard in his nightdress, and he rolls out of bed, creeping to the window to stare out.

In him is a pain; the kind of raw, belly gripe agony that lurks in realities one cannot escape, the swift shame of failings stared right in the eye. Jim was only a boy back then, but on the cusp of _now,_ of the haze and the sweats and the secret nights he would tell no-one even on his deathbed, and a song and a smile beckoned him so quiet and easy into it he barely realised he was being stolen from.

It wasn't just the pain. It was the _happiness_ , that happiness so disassociated from everyone else, even his brothers, the knowing of something sweet that was only his, a shared sacred thing. There, in the barrel of scum green apples, he heard the chuckle dangerous and the swipe of blades none too tender and knew he had put his trust in a monster, that his happiness was a false thing. It made feelings ugly and he would not admit, not ever, how he had felt, how the times together formed curvatures on his self, a hidden part of himself he would never know nor share.

 But somehow still there was excitement, there was change, there was belonging and beauty and crafty adventure, all of which he had been denied and all of which he had found in Long John Silver. He told himself after it was the disappointment of shredded dreams, of waspish opportunists, that paperwork and pride took legion over wild wind in fresh sails.

Polaris sparkles sharp and pretty, as it always has, but be damned if Jim Hawkins can ever find his bearings. He is here, awaiting the dawn of a secret night, and Silver, Silver is long gone.

Jim gets back into bed, clutches the compass close to his lurching heart, and weeps before he sleeps again, dreamless.

In the morning, he can only hope to be a boy again.


End file.
